Comments on: Why academic journals need to gohttp://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/01/why-academic-journals-need-to-go/
The blog of neurobiologist Björn BrembsWed, 30 May 2018 13:29:09 +0000hourly1By: Open access nel programma di “Liberi e uguali”: alcune osservazioni | AISAhttp://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/01/why-academic-journals-need-to-go/#comment-5540
Thu, 15 Feb 2018 22:30:11 +0000http://bjoern.brembs.net/?p=1677#comment-5540[…] a meno degli editori commerciali; e c’è chi pensa che una soluzione simile dovrebbe essere applicata alla letteratura scientifica in generale. Peraltro, fuori d’Italia, università ed enti di ricerca stanno cominciando a negoziare con […]
]]>By: Björn Brembshttp://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/01/why-academic-journals-need-to-go/#comment-5538
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 07:47:49 +0000http://bjoern.brembs.net/?p=1677#comment-5538Sorry, I may be misunderstanding something. I thought you were providing an opportunity for creating community journals, maybe that’s not all of your plan? Clearly, if I had a paper that could get published in Nature or Science and I chose instead to publish it in a community journal on WordPress, I clearly would be risking my career (depending on the filed of study, of course). Hence, any reform that is based on authors choosing to not publish in a GlamMag is simultaneously based on authors risking their careers. This is what Stevan Harnad suggested 25 years ago in his “Subversive Proposal” and which in the last 25 years has not happened.

In terms of assessing already published articles, we already have, e.g., PubPeer and it certainly has not changed authors’ publishing behavior one bit.

Taken together, I think there is plenty of historical evidence that neither new publishing venues, nor post-publication review has changed authors’ behavior at all. Thus, I’m not sure repeating previously failed strategies is a smart move. Again, I may have misunderstood the solutions you propose. In this case I apologize and would ask for a clarification.

For the cash flow via subscriptions to end, you do not need 7 million authors to risk their careers, that’s my whole point. We have to convince a few thousand infrastructure experts in the world’s libraries and computing centers to simply do their job: shift funds away from subscriptions (which are a waste of money) towards a sustainable infrastructure, as, e.g., described here:

Clearly, all librarians I talked to see the advantages of a modern IT system over 17th century subscriptions. Hence, if they just did their job of providing us with the best infrastructure money can buy, subscriptions would not even be on the list of things to buy. Obviously, convincing a few thousand to do their job should be easier than to convince a few million to risk their job. Which is why I propose to direct all our campaigning efforts not to researchers but to librarians. The message of the campaign should simply be: get us the best infrastructure for our money. Arguably, that’s at least a new approach and not a repetition of a failed approach. I’m not sure that it will work, but at least it’s not a failed approach.

Everybody already knows that the journals do not provide a quality assurance system:

and still, this insight hasn’t changed authors’ behavior, neither has PubPeer. I would take that as evidence that just providing a better quality control system will have zero effect in the future just as it has had zero effect in the past. Even if Nature or Science were widely known that they publish the worst science (which they in fact do), people will still publish there, if they think their livelihoods depend on it.

Thus, it seems there is sufficient evidence that additional publishing or quality control options have failed in the past. I’m not sure just trying the same failed strategies over and over again is a worthwhile effort. I’d rather try something new.

]]>By: Victor Venema (@VariabilityBlog)http://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/01/why-academic-journals-need-to-go/#comment-5537
Tue, 30 Jan 2018 01:29:25 +0000http://bjoern.brembs.net/?p=1677#comment-5537To start with question 2. No idea why you are asking me. My plan is for scientific communities to assess published articles as well. Authors thus do not have to risk their careers. Once the system is accepted, it will not be a risk any more to ignore the publishers.

That may be the key idea, authors do not have to submit their articles to new unproven journals. The grassroots journals will simply assess all articles and manuscripts they can find. That is how we can escape the vicious circle.

Question 2 would be my question to you, Björn. I do not think just appealing to higher motives will convince about 7 million authors to risk their careers. Without breaking the vicious cycle question 1 is thus superfluous, the monopolistic profits will keep on being handed to the publishers.

Publishing is no longer hard, ArXiv does it for 1$ per manuscript, all the publishers have is their brand names. Thus we have to create a new quality assurance system. If we make a better one, 7 million authors will be happy and the publishers are dead.

How fast it will go will depend on how much support the idea will find. I naturally like it, but we will have to see what the world will say.

]]>By: Björn Brembshttp://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/01/why-academic-journals-need-to-go/#comment-5536
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:09:31 +0000http://bjoern.brembs.net/?p=1677#comment-5536Thank you for your comment. Exciting initiative! Indeed, any wordpress-hosted article has more digital functionality than any legacy article.
There are two details I’d like to know your answer to:
1. You wrote “it will be hard to get rid of commercial publishers”. How would commercial publishers survive without cash flow?
2. What is your strategy to convince about 7 million authors (full time equivalents, according to the UN) to risk their careers and what is your time-estimate for reaching that goal?
]]>By: Victor Venema (@VariabilityBlog)http://bjoern.brembs.net/2018/01/why-academic-journals-need-to-go/#comment-5535
Sun, 28 Jan 2018 16:52:02 +0000http://bjoern.brembs.net/?p=1677#comment-5535It will be hard to get rid of the commercial publishers. I am exploring something that will hopefully make the transition easier: grassroots scientific publishing. Where a scientific community curates the articles in their field, in that way bring all articles scattered over many journals together, explain which ones are important and why. And stays up to date.http://grassrootspublishing.wordpress.com/

It starts by doing this better kind of review for already published articles/preprints, but once accepted as a good way of quality assurance, we could do the same for manuscripts and would not longer need publishers. To show how it would work I have started a journal for my own field of study:http://homogenisation.wordpress.com/